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>You could imagine a world in which streets were pedestrianized and where we planted trees and gardens and in what is currently space reserved for parking, and

>You could imagine a world in which streets were pedestrianized and where we planted trees and gardens and in what is currently space reserved for parking, and closed streets, outside schools, so kids can have places to play. I would love to see a LOT more of this in urban centers. I live in a college town that is about the same size as Iowa City. Iowa City has taken the step of closing off their downtown and making it mostly pedestrian space. It's incredibly nice to explore the area on foot. Our city has considered the same idea but pedestrianizing our downtown has been so controversial when it has been discussed, it hasn't come up for over a decade- mayors are scared to death to touch it. Part of the reason is poor past civic planning would make it very expensive to correct. The main conduit through the downtown business district is also the major East-West artery of town, making the street one of those dreaded "stroads-" a street in the sense that there is heavy commercial and residential presence, resulting in a LOT of local foot traffic and stops all day long; mixed with traffic that just wants to get through downtown to somewhere else. So half of the traffic is looking for parking and the other half is running red lights to get somewhere else as fast as possible. There have been, predictably, many incidents involving cars, pedestrians and bicycles. But not one inch moved on what's become the 800lb gorilla. I don't think a solution is even possible.

Mountain_Skies 3y ago
A college town's context is very different than that of the central business district and inner city of a large metropolitan area. Context doesn't just matter, it's one of, if not the most, important aspects to consider when selecting a development pattern. You can't turn downtown St. Lous into downtown Iowa City or even 'downtown' Seoul, South Korea. Dreamers hate this reality and will contort their assertions every which way they can to avoid admitting any of this.
- throwbadubadu 3y ago
  But those contexts and also such "contexts transformations" exist, so why possible at some places and unthinkable at others? Just saying "dreamer hits reality hard" is a bit destructive, arrogant, and apparently not the complete necessary truth?
- dublinben 3y ago
  Downtown St. Louis used to look like Iowa City though, before it was ruined by "urban renewal" and automobiles in the 20th century.[0][1] It was deliberately transformed from one into the other, and can just as deliberately be transformed back again. [0] https://www.pinterest.com/pin/91127592440641982/ https://www.pinterest.com/pin/91127592440641982/ [1] https://www.stlmag.com/history/pedestrian-deaths-streets-downtown-st-louis-gravois/ https://www.stlmag.com/history/pedestrian-deaths-streets-dow...
- dopidopHN 3y ago
  Paris is closing the already pretty closed downtown ( along the Seine ). Does that qualify as large metro area? What are the actual piece of reality that makes it impossible in US cities?
  - mlyle 3y ago
    It's totally possible, but not as a step change. Heavy car traffic is a stable system that's actively unfriendly to pedestrian and bicycle uses. You need to slowly claw away space for bicycles and increase ridership; and then work to densify and intermix commercial and residential for things to work well. It takes decades, and the initial steps make things worse even if the new equilibrium is better.
    - chimeracoder 3y ago
      > Heavy car traffic is a stable system that's actively unfriendly to pedestrian and bicycle uses. You need to slowly claw away space for bicycles and increase ridership; and then work to densify and intermix commercial and residential for things to work well. > > It takes decades, and the initial steps make things worse even if the new equilibrium is better. Your point about the stable equilibrium is correct, but there's no reason it has to take decades. If you look at pictures of cities like Amsterdam, Paris, and Vienna from not long ago, you can see how much more pedestrian-friendly they were made, and much of those changes actually happened more or less overnight. The actual changes are pretty easy to implement. Red tape slows it down, but that's a feature of our own invention, not an inherent limitation.
      - mlyle 3y ago
        Things can definitely improve. I'm thinking of Copenhagen, which is probably the most bicycle friendly city in the world; it's taken about 50-70 years of bicycle-friendly policy and it's only now reached a point where number of car trips per day and bicycle trips per day in the city are equal.
    - dopidopHN 3y ago
      Yes, it takes grits. Yo expands on Paris, Each mayor has been hated for it. The last one in particular. But then the reclaimed public space speaks for itself. Usually it seams irreal to think that an highway was in place of that canal/pedestrian area/bike lane/long park
- hibikir 3y ago
  As it happens, a non-trivial amount of Downtown St Louis is now failing commercial real estate: It's not just the AT&T building, which could be had for cheaper than many Seattle single family homes, or the two hotels in receivership, but also now Bank of America plaza. Wework exited downtown too, leaving two more empty floors in One Metropolitan Square. Its current use is basically sporting events, and the few government buildings that have to stay there. Now, I'd not recommend that we centered any serious investment making downtown less car-friendly, but mainly because downtown's fixes are way too expensive: In its current form, it's not doing well, and not trending up. Walkability could help, but walkability downtown isn't a matter of making Market street narrower, or slower: Many buildings themselves are set up to be anti-pedestrian, with huge setbacks to the street, and no retail space. Just huge office buildings nobody wants to rent. Interventions to help the city of St Louis just have to start in parts of the city that have better bones. Spend a little to make the somewhat successful parts of the city a bit more successful. Allow relatively walkable neighborhoods to become denser, bigger and more walkable, and see if people vote with their feet. Downtown? We couldn't afford fixing it, for either cars or pedestrians.
david2ndaccount 3y ago
Part of the problem is you can’t just convert an area to a pedestrian area as people still need to be able to get there. You need to construct low cost parking garages around the area so people can still get there.
- Cockbrand 3y ago
  Comments like this make me appreciate living in a city that has a pretty comprehensive public transport coverage, and where bicycling is at least tolerable. The city you describe seems to be only usable by car.
  - david2ndaccount 3y ago
    Many cities in the US are only usable by car. You can’t just leap from a car-based city to a non-car-based city, you have to provide transitionary options (also even car-optional cities still have parking garages).
    - Cockbrand 3y ago
      Absolutely, and while the transition is probably desirable, it'll take a long time. And yes, of course there's in fact still too much car traffic around here, and parking garages exist in great numbers.
    - 8note 3y ago
      What it takes is tearing down large swaths of current car infrastructure and the buildings surrounding it. Eg. Seattle tearing down the viaduct a few years back Which is what it took to turn American cities into car based to begin with.
      - lazyasciiart 3y ago
        That's not a great example, because Seattle spent kajillions of dollars on a ridiculous tunnel under the city to replace the viaduct AND THEN built a second ground-level highway on the newly available delightful waterfront space. Seattle's way of getting rid of the viaduct is a colossal waste of money and years of work for a terrible shitty result that is 1000% car based. A giant failure.
ZitchDog 3y ago
I live in Iowa City - thanks for the shoutout! I can confirm - I work downtown, it's great. Boulder has a similar concept.
mturmon 3y ago
Ithaca, New York is another similar-sized town (population ~31K) that closed some blocks of its downtown "Main Street" (State Street) to make a very pleasant pedestrian business district. This happened in the 1970s. The pedestrianized portion of State Street was part of a New York state highway -- highway traffic was re-routed to be on parallel one-way streets, separated by 2 blocks, that bracket the district. The somewhat scattered wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ithaca_Commons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ithaca_Commons) has some of the backstory. (I lived there in the 90s and I think it's exaggerating the downturn in those years, but whatever.)
paganel 3y ago
[flagged]
- nerdbert 3y ago
  This idea that cars - which are a vastly more expensive and often slower way to get around cities - are by fundamental nature of the working class while bicycles belong to the elite, borders on the absurd. It's only this way because North American urban design forces lower-income people into least-common denominator poorly planned areas where cars are the only practical way to navigate. It doesn't have to be like that.

Mountain_Skies 3y ago

A college town's context is very different than that of the central business district and inner city of a large metropolitan area. Context doesn't just matter, it's one of, if not the most, important aspects to consider when selecting a development pattern. You can't turn downtown St. Lous into downtown Iowa City or even 'downtown' Seoul, South Korea. Dreamers hate this reality and will contort their assertions every which way they can to avoid admitting any of this.

throwbadubadu 3y ago
But those contexts and also such "contexts transformations" exist, so why possible at some places and unthinkable at others? Just saying "dreamer hits reality hard" is a bit destructive, arrogant, and apparently not the complete necessary truth?
dublinben 3y ago
Downtown St. Louis used to look like Iowa City though, before it was ruined by "urban renewal" and automobiles in the 20th century.[0][1] It was deliberately transformed from one into the other, and can just as deliberately be transformed back again. [0] https://www.pinterest.com/pin/91127592440641982/ https://www.pinterest.com/pin/91127592440641982/ [1] https://www.stlmag.com/history/pedestrian-deaths-streets-downtown-st-louis-gravois/ https://www.stlmag.com/history/pedestrian-deaths-streets-dow...
dopidopHN 3y ago
Paris is closing the already pretty closed downtown ( along the Seine ). Does that qualify as large metro area? What are the actual piece of reality that makes it impossible in US cities?
- mlyle 3y ago
  It's totally possible, but not as a step change. Heavy car traffic is a stable system that's actively unfriendly to pedestrian and bicycle uses. You need to slowly claw away space for bicycles and increase ridership; and then work to densify and intermix commercial and residential for things to work well. It takes decades, and the initial steps make things worse even if the new equilibrium is better.
  - chimeracoder 3y ago
    > Heavy car traffic is a stable system that's actively unfriendly to pedestrian and bicycle uses. You need to slowly claw away space for bicycles and increase ridership; and then work to densify and intermix commercial and residential for things to work well. > > It takes decades, and the initial steps make things worse even if the new equilibrium is better. Your point about the stable equilibrium is correct, but there's no reason it has to take decades. If you look at pictures of cities like Amsterdam, Paris, and Vienna from not long ago, you can see how much more pedestrian-friendly they were made, and much of those changes actually happened more or less overnight. The actual changes are pretty easy to implement. Red tape slows it down, but that's a feature of our own invention, not an inherent limitation.
    - mlyle 3y ago
      Things can definitely improve. I'm thinking of Copenhagen, which is probably the most bicycle friendly city in the world; it's taken about 50-70 years of bicycle-friendly policy and it's only now reached a point where number of car trips per day and bicycle trips per day in the city are equal.
  - dopidopHN 3y ago
    Yes, it takes grits. Yo expands on Paris, Each mayor has been hated for it. The last one in particular. But then the reclaimed public space speaks for itself. Usually it seams irreal to think that an highway was in place of that canal/pedestrian area/bike lane/long park
hibikir 3y ago
As it happens, a non-trivial amount of Downtown St Louis is now failing commercial real estate: It's not just the AT&T building, which could be had for cheaper than many Seattle single family homes, or the two hotels in receivership, but also now Bank of America plaza. Wework exited downtown too, leaving two more empty floors in One Metropolitan Square. Its current use is basically sporting events, and the few government buildings that have to stay there. Now, I'd not recommend that we centered any serious investment making downtown less car-friendly, but mainly because downtown's fixes are way too expensive: In its current form, it's not doing well, and not trending up. Walkability could help, but walkability downtown isn't a matter of making Market street narrower, or slower: Many buildings themselves are set up to be anti-pedestrian, with huge setbacks to the street, and no retail space. Just huge office buildings nobody wants to rent. Interventions to help the city of St Louis just have to start in parts of the city that have better bones. Spend a little to make the somewhat successful parts of the city a bit more successful. Allow relatively walkable neighborhoods to become denser, bigger and more walkable, and see if people vote with their feet. Downtown? We couldn't afford fixing it, for either cars or pedestrians.

david2ndaccount 3y ago

Part of the problem is you can’t just convert an area to a pedestrian area as people still need to be able to get there. You need to construct low cost parking garages around the area so people can still get there.

Cockbrand 3y ago
Comments like this make me appreciate living in a city that has a pretty comprehensive public transport coverage, and where bicycling is at least tolerable. The city you describe seems to be only usable by car.
- david2ndaccount 3y ago
  Many cities in the US are only usable by car. You can’t just leap from a car-based city to a non-car-based city, you have to provide transitionary options (also even car-optional cities still have parking garages).
  - Cockbrand 3y ago
    Absolutely, and while the transition is probably desirable, it'll take a long time. And yes, of course there's in fact still too much car traffic around here, and parking garages exist in great numbers.
  - 8note 3y ago
    What it takes is tearing down large swaths of current car infrastructure and the buildings surrounding it. Eg. Seattle tearing down the viaduct a few years back Which is what it took to turn American cities into car based to begin with.
    - lazyasciiart 3y ago
      That's not a great example, because Seattle spent kajillions of dollars on a ridiculous tunnel under the city to replace the viaduct AND THEN built a second ground-level highway on the newly available delightful waterfront space. Seattle's way of getting rid of the viaduct is a colossal waste of money and years of work for a terrible shitty result that is 1000% car based. A giant failure.

ZitchDog 3y ago

I live in Iowa City - thanks for the shoutout! I can confirm - I work downtown, it's great. Boulder has a similar concept.

mturmon 3y ago

Ithaca, New York is another similar-sized town (population ~31K) that closed some blocks of its downtown "Main Street" (State Street) to make a very pleasant pedestrian business district. This happened in the 1970s. The pedestrianized portion of State Street was part of a New York state highway -- highway traffic was re-routed to be on parallel one-way streets, separated by 2 blocks, that bracket the district. The somewhat scattered wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ithaca_Commons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ithaca_Commons) has some of the backstory. (I lived there in the 90s and I think it's exaggerating the downturn in those years, but whatever.)

paganel 3y ago

[flagged]

nerdbert 3y ago
This idea that cars - which are a vastly more expensive and often slower way to get around cities - are by fundamental nature of the working class while bicycles belong to the elite, borders on the absurd. It's only this way because North American urban design forces lower-income people into least-common denominator poorly planned areas where cars are the only practical way to navigate. It doesn't have to be like that.